The report, No Escape: War Crimes and Civilian Harm During The Fall Of Afghanistan To The Taliban, documents torture, extrajudicial executions and killings by the Taliban during the final stages of the conflict in Afghanistan, as well as civilian casualties during a series of ground and air operations by the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and US military forces.

“The months before the government collapse in Kabul were marked by repeated war crimes and relentless bloodshed committed by the Taliban, as well as deaths caused by Afghan and US forces,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Our new evidence shows that, far from the seamless transition of power that the Taliban claimed happened, the people of Afghanistan have once again paid with their lives.

“Homes, hospitals, schools and shops were turned into crime scenes as people were repeatedly killed and injured. The people of Afghanistan have suffered for too long, and victims must have access to justice and receive reparations.

“The International Criminal Court must reverse its misguided decision to deprioritize investigations into US and Afghan military operations, and instead follow the evidence on all possible war crimes, no matter where it leads.”

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that 1,659 civilians were killed and another 3,524 injured in the first six months of 2021, an increase of 47% from the prior year.

Taliban atrocities

As they seized control of districts across Afghanistan in July and August 2021, members of the Taliban tortured and killed ethnic and religious minorities, former ANDSF soldiers, and those perceived as government sympathizers in reprisal attacks.

On September 6, 2021, Taliban forces attacked Bazarak town in Panjshir province. After a brief battle, approximately 20 men were captured by Taliban fighters and detained for two days, at times jailed in a pigeon coop. They were tortured, denied food, water and medical assistance, and repeatedly threatened with execution.

One of the men captured by the Taliban said: “[The] Talib had taken a knife… he was saying he wanted to behead the wounded… because they are infidels and Jews.”

Another man added: “They kept us underground. When we were asking for medical treatment of the wounded, the Taliban were saying, ‘Let them die’… There was no food and water, and no support to the wounded. They had brutal relations with us. When we were asking for water, they were saying, ‘Die of thirst’.” Torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of captives constitute war crimes.

Later the same day, the Taliban also attacked the nearby village of Urmaz, where they conducted door-to-door searches to identify people suspected of working for the former government. The fighters extrajudicially executed at least six civilian men within 24 hours, mainly by gunshots to the head, chest or heart. Such killings constitute war crimes. Eyewitnesses said that while some of the men had previously served in the ANSDF, none were in government security forces or taking part in hostilities in any way at the time of execution.

The report also documents reprisal attacks and executions of people affiliated with the former government in Spin Boldak. Amnesty International previously documented Taliban massacres of ethnic Hazaras in Ghazni and Daykundi provinces.

The full scale of the killings nationwide still remains unknown, as the Taliban cut mobile phone service, or severely restricted internet access, in many rural areas.

Civilian casualties from US and Afghan air strikes

The report documents four air strikes – three most likely carried out by US forces, and one by the Afghan Air Force – in recent years. The strikes killed a total of 28 civilians (15 men, five women, and eight children), and injured another six.

The strikes generally resulted in civilian deaths because the US dropped explosive weapons in densely populated areas. Amnesty International has previously documented similar impacts of explosive weapons in numerous other conflicts, and supports a political declaration to curb their use.

On November 9, 2020, an air strike most likely carried out by US forces killed five civilians – including a three-month-old girl – and wounded six at a family home in the Mulla Ghulam neighborhood of Khanabad city, in Kunduz province.

A nine-year-old child who was injured in the attack said: “I was sleeping when the first bomb hit… They were telling us to hide somewhere in case the second bomb happened. My father said I had to find my younger brother. The second bomb killed my mother, my uncle, my aunt, and my sister.”

Such strikes form a pattern of civilian harm that continued until the last moments of the conflict, when a US drone strike killed 10 people, including seven children, in Kabul on August 29, 2021. The US military later admitted that those killed were civilians.

Civilians killed in ground combat

The report documents eight cases during ground combat in which a total of 12 civilians were killed (five men, one woman, and six children), and 15 more injured. Through a combination of negligence and disregard for the law, the US-trained ANDSF frequently launched mortar attacks that hit homes and killed civilians in hiding.

The fighting in Kunduz city was especially fierce in June 2021. In the suburb of Zakhail, government forces launched mortars into densely populated neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Taliban forces gained ground, using schools and mosques to launch attacks, and demanding food from families trapped in their homes.

On June 22, 2021, one man was killed and two people were injured during a mortar attack in Zakhail. The ANDSF most likely launched the mortar from the First Police District, approximately 2.5 kilometers from the scene of the explosion. The man killed was Abdul Razaq, 20, who was recently engaged to be married. Fragments from the mortar tore open his head and stomach.

Later the same day in the same neighborhood, one child was killed and two more were injured when a mortar – again most likely launched by the ANDSF – hit a home where a family was in hiding. A metal fragment hit Manizha, a 12-year-old girl, in the spine, paralyzing and eventually killing her.

One man said the Taliban often forewarned families about combat, but they had received no similar communication from the government. He said: “The Taliban…say, ‘We will be fighting tonight’, and the people who can afford to leave do – but the poor people stay because they will starve if they leave. But there is no use of asking the government, when we know they are going to do nothing.”

The use of mortars, whose use in populated areas is inherently indiscriminate, can constitute a war crime.

Reparations and accountability

Multiple family members of victims of military actions told Amnesty International they did not receive sufficient, if any, reparations from the government.

One man, whose family home was destroyed in an air strike, said: “No one from the government came afterwards. We went to the district and told them what happened. No one came to us. They said, ‘This is not good. It should not have happened. We share your pain’. But nothing happened.”

Amnesty International is calling on the Taliban and the US government to fulfill their international obligations, and establish clear and robust mechanisms for civilians to request reparations for harm sustained during the conflict.

“The Taliban authorities now have the same legal obligation to provide reparations as the former government, and must address all issues of civilian harm seriously,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Victims and their families must receive reparations, and all those suspected of responsibility must be held to account in fair trials before ordinary civilian courts and without recourse to the death penalty.”

Methodology

Amnesty International conducted on-the-ground research in Kabul from August 1-15, 2021, and completed remote phone interviews with victims and witnesses via secure video and voice calls from August to November 2021.

Amnesty International conducted face-to-face interviews in Kabul with 65 people, and remote interviews through encrypted mobile apps with an additional 36 people, from a total of 10 provinces.

The organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab also reviewed satellite imagery, videos and photographs, medical and ballistics information, and interviewed relevant experts where necessary.

Contact: Gabby Arias, media@aiusa.org

Source: https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/government-collapse-in-afghanistan-marked-by-repeated-war-crimes/

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“We are a family. When one of us is under attack, the rest of us will be there for him,” said Margaritis Schinas, vice president of the European Commission, speaking to reporters earlier this week. Schinas, the former EU spokesman who now represents Greece in the Commission, described a proposal to “temporarily” reduce some asylum rights in EU member states Poland and the Baltic states as an act of “tangible solidarity.”

Margaritis Schinas@MargSchinas

When one of us is attacked, we are all attacked.

We stand by the MS managing the external border in the name of the EU.

Tangible solidarity with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in full respect to the right to asylum and the protection of fundamental rights

Schinas introduced the plan to suspend EU law at its borders with Belarus for the next six months along with Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is responsible for migration. European treaties, he said Wednesday, do allow for “exceptional measures” like this in an “emergency situation.”

According to the proposal, migrants could be held in closed camps at the border for up to 16 weeks, to undergo a correspondingly extended asylum process. The registration time would be extended to four weeks, and faster deportations will explicitly be authorized. EU interior ministers could approve the proposal next week without the European Parliament having to approve the “emergency measure.”

The move came under immediate criticism from some members of the European Parliament, who called the new approach unacceptable, especially given the decreasing numbers of asylum-seekers at the border. Instead of helping the people on the ground, said Birgit Sippel, spokesperson for the Party of European Socialists, the measures “play straight into the hands of governments that want to use the plight of vulnerable migrants to spread anxiety and fear about a migration crisis at the EU’s borders.”

When presenting their “emergency measures,” the two commissioners acknowledged that the situation in Belarus was de-escalating.They didn’t, however, comment when asked why it was still necessary to limit asylum rights in the area.

Aid agencies criticize move to put ‘politics over peoples’ lives’
“It is extremely doubtful whether the European Commission will be able to put the genie back in the bottle after it has spent 18 months standing by, for the most part, as systematic human rights violations are committed against people seeking protection,” said Erik Marquardt, a German migration expert with the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the EU Parliament.

In the past few months, for example, the Polish Border Guard agency has published a daily tally of pushbacks, the summary deportation of people from EU territory, which are prohibited under international law. However, the Polish government has yet to be criticized by Brussels for the practice.

Warsaw is also still preventing people from reporting freely at the border, and hindering access for aid organizations. A new border protection law, which came into force on Wednesday to replace the state of emergency at the border, has legalized the existing restrictions. Under the new law, the interior minister can establish a 15-kilometer (9-mile) wide exclusion zone at the border, effectively creating a legal vacuum.

Both the Polish Senate and the country’s commissioner for human rights have expressed doubts about the law’s legality, arguing that it contradicts the Polish constitution. Rights groups have also spoken out against the legislation.

“Stopping, detaining and criminalising people trying to find safety in Europe breaks international and European asylum law,” said aid organization Oxfam on Thursday. “Supporting the detention of migrants at EU borders puts politics over peoples’ lives.”

“Asylum rules should be upheld, not allowed to be side-stepped by countries via so-called exceptional measures,” said Amnesty International in a press statement, adding that the border arrivals could be easily handled under the existing rules. The group added that it was alarmed by the Commission’s proposal, which it said would “violate people’s rights and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.”

The European Commission, however, has yet to comment on Poland’s new law.

Pushbacks reported in Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria
Poland isn’t the only EU member state that has been accused of carrying out illegal pushbacks. In Greece, media outlets have uncovered evidence of several cases, yet the government in Athens has maintained that the numerous reports are false. A recent case made headlines in The New York Times on Wednesday, just as Schinas was announcing the Commission’s proposal, once again shedding light on the practices of Greek border guards.

The article said an interpreter working for the EU border agency Frontex was forcibly taken to a remote warehouse with a group of about 100 migrants, including women and children. The interpreter, who is originally from Afghanistan but has been living in the EU legally for years, said they were beaten and stripped. Police allegedly seized their mobile phones, money and documents, before putting them into dinghies and pushing them back across the Evros River into Turkish territory.

Home Affairs Commissioner Johansson said she was “extremely concerned by [the] account.” The New York Times reported that the man handed over audio and video evidence of the abuse and the pushback carried out by Greek authorities, and wrote that the EU “which has mostly looked the other way on abuses of migrants, is now being forced to confront the problem.”

This, however, is by no means certain. The illegal practice has also reportedly been taking place along the EU border in Croatia and Bulgaria, despite forceful criticism by Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, during a recent visit to the European Parliament.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-criticized-for-move-to-restrict-asylum-rights-at-belarus-border/a-60021873

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The report – which the Associated Press said is the first time authorities have offered any sort of accounting for the violence used to quell the demonstrations — comes a day after Amnesty International estimated that at least 208 people have been killed since they began in mid-November.

“This alarming death toll is further evidence that Iran’s security forces went on a horrific killing spree, that left at least 208 people dead in less than a week,” Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, previously said in a statement.

“Since the Iranian authorities have previously shown they are unwilling to carry out independent, impartial and effective investigations into unlawful killings and other arbitrary use of force against protesters, we are calling on the international community to help ensure accountability,” he added.

People walk past buildings that were burned during recent protests, in Shahriar, Iran, on Nov. 20. (AP)

IRANIAN ACTIVIST SAYS UNREST IS ‘TOTALLY DIFFERENT’ FROM PAST PROTESTS AGAINST REGIME

The statement also said Amnesty viewed footage showing security forces shooting unarmed protesters.

An Iranian judiciary official though has disputed the Amnesty toll as “sheer lies,” without offering any evidence to support his position. Iran shut down internet access amid the unrest, blocking those inside the country from sharing their videos and information.

The recent demonstrations — while not drawing as many Iranians into the streets as the 2009 protests over the country’s disputed presidential election — rapidly turned violent, faster than previous rallies.

They started after authorities raised minimum gasoline prices by 50 percent, to 15,000 Iranian rials per liter. That’s 12 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. After a monthly 60-liter quota, the cost then rises to 30,000 rials a liter, which is nearly 24 cents a liter or 90 cents a gallon. An average gallon of regular gas in the U.S. costs $2.58 by comparison, according to AAA.

IRAN CONSIDERED STRIKING US BASES BEFORE DECIDING ON SAUDI ARABIAN OIL FIELD

Shattered windows line a building that was set ablaze during protests over government-set gasoline prices rises, in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 20. (AP)

Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. That disparity, especially given Iran’s oil wealth, fueled the anger felt by demonstrators.

The state TV report Tuesday alleged that some of those killed were “rioters who have attacked sensitive or military centers with firearms or knives or have taken hostages in some areas.” The report described others killed as passers-by, security forces and peaceful protesters, without assigning blame for their deaths.

In one case, the report said security forces confronted a separatist group armed with “semi-heavy weapons” in the city of Mahshahr in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province. The surrounding oil-rich province’s Arab population long has complained of discrimination by Iran’s central government and insurgent groups have attacked oil pipelines in the past there. Online videos purportedly from the area showed peaceful protests, as well as clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

“The marshes you see behind me and on the right are where hostile groups were hiding and shooting at the police, but praise to Allah, the armed forces deftly and vigilantly came to the field and foiled their plots,” Mahshahr police chief Col. Reza Papi said in the report.

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State TV also acknowledged that security forces confronted “rioters” in Tehran, as well as in the cities of Shiraz and Sirjan. It also mentioned Shahriar, a suburb of Tehran where Amnesty on Monday said there had been “dozens of deaths.” It described the suburb as likely one of the areas with the highest toll of those killed in the unrest. Shahriar has seen heavy protests.

Amnesty International offered no breakdown for the deaths elsewhere in the country, though it said: “the real figure is likely to be higher.”

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-state-run-tv-security-forces-shot-killed-rioters-gas-price-protests

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London-based Amnesty said at least 106 demonstrators have been killed in 21 cities since protests began Friday, citing what it said was verified video footage and credible witness testimony.

Security forces have used firearms, water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters, according to the report, which also cited the use of live ammunition.

A blanket restriction on Internet access since Sunday has stymied protesters’ ability to share images and information on social media. The civil society group NetBlocks, which monitors Internet access worldwide, said Tuesday that some of Iran’s last remaining networks were being cut.

“Connectivity to the outside world has fallen further to 4% of normal levels,” the group said.

Cash-strapped Iranians are protesting a rise in fuel prices. Here’s how economic protests have played out before.

The moves to stifle the flow of information come as local media reported the deaths of three members of the security forces near the capital, Tehran, overnight.

Two members of the Basij paramilitary force and a commander in the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps were stabbed to death in the city’s suburbs, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

The United Nations on Tuesday condemned the use of live ammunition by security forces. State media published images of burned-out buildings, charred vehicles and shattered storefronts in cities such as Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz.

Residents reached by telephone in Tehran described alternate scenes of chaos and calm Monday as protesters emerged spontaneously on city streets only to be chased away by heavily armed police. An unverified video posted online early Tuesday showed demonstrators chanting against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, at the University of Tehran.

“Today, there were more officers everywhere in the city . . . in the east and west [of Tehran], nighttime clashes were widespread,” journalism student Amir Yaghoubali, who said he managed to connect briefly to the Internet, posted on Twitter early Tuesday.

“People are unaware of even the protests in Tehran, let alone in other cities,” he said, adding that he witnessed immense destruction of property and buildings in the eastern part of the capital.

Residents reached by telephone in Tehran described alternate scenes of chaos and calm Monday as protesters emerged spontaneously on city streets only to be chased away by heavily armed police. An unverified video posted online early Tuesday showed demonstrators chanting against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, at the University of Tehran.

“Today, there were more officers everywhere in the city . . . in the east and west [of Tehran], nighttime clashes were widespread,” journalism student Amir Yaghoubali, who said he managed to connect briefly to the Internet, posted on Twitter early Tuesday.

“People are unaware of even the protests in Tehran, let alone in other cities,” he said, adding that he witnessed immense destruction of property and buildings in the eastern part of the capital.

A burned billboard hangs on a pedestrian overpass in Tehran. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

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“Calm has been restored in the country,” Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesman for the judiciary, said at a news conference Tuesday, local media reported. “A large number of saboteurs and rioters . . . have been identified.”

But Amnesty said it had viewed verified video footage of riot police smashing windows of cars with drivers still inside. Hundreds of protesters had blocked roads with their cars.

One resident who said he left his vehicle on the road between Tehran and Karaj, west of the capital, later found it with its windshield shattered by a bullet. The resident spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals by security forces.

In Karaj and Shahriar, also west of Tehran, residents reached by telephone described widespread damage to government buildings. Two of the security personnel killed Monday night were reported to have been attacked near Shahriar.

In the Hengam district in east Tehran, one resident reported hearing gunfire into the night Monday. Another said he was summoned by police, who accused him of participating in the demonstrations. A resident of Isfahan in central Iran said buildings in some parts of the city were either burned or “completely destroyed.”

Amnesty cited witnesses as saying they saw security forces removing bodies and injured people from roads and hospitals. Snipers also fired on crowds from rooftops and, in one case, a helicopter, the report said.

“The frequency and persistence of lethal force used against peaceful protesters in these and previous mass protests, as well as the systematic impunity for security forces who kill protesters, raise serious fears that the intentional lethal use of firearms to crush protests has become a matter of state policy,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The protests have underscored the frustration among ordinary Iranians who have watched the nation’s currency plummet and their savings evaporate. Similar cuts to subsidies set off demonstrations nearly two years ago.

Under the new order, the price of gasoline was raised from 10,000 to 15,000 rials, or 13 cents per liter (50 cents per gallon).

Consumers are allocated 60 liters of gas at the minimum price, after which they are charged double the amount per liter. Previously, consumers could buy as many as 250 liters at the subsidized price.

On Tuesday, Iran’s consumer protection agency said it was prohibiting suppliers from raising the price of goods on orders from the Ministry of Industry, Mine, and Trade.

Officials conceded that they had botched the rollout of the subsidy cuts, announcing the price increase in a late-night decree ahead of the weekend. Iran maintains the world’s fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and has some of its highest fuel subsidies, which economists say encourage waste.

“Maybe we weren’t able to explain properly the benefits of implementing the plan,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Tuesday, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported. “But I believe a fair decision was made to make subsidies more targeted.”

He said Internet access would be restored gradually across the country once the protests subsided.

“Many businesses, banks and other professions that depend on the Internet have faced problems. We are trying to solve this,” he said. “But the bigger concern in the current situation is maintaining peace and stability in the country.”

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Memo to President Trump: Iran is not about to collapse

Iran bars U.N. nuclear inspector from uranium-enrichment plant, citing positive test for explosive nitrates

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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Erin Cunningham

Erin Cunningham is an Istanbul-based correspondent for The Washington Post, covering conflict and political turmoil across the Middle East. She previously was a correspondent at the paper’s bureau in Cairo and has reported on wars in Afghanistan, Gaza, Libya, and Iraq.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/three-security-personnel-killed-in-iran-amid-wave-of-unrest/2019/11/19/af9cbdd6-0a42-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

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A spokeswoman for the EU on Thursday expressed condolences to the families of those killed during protests in Iran and called for dialogue to resolve the tensions.

“We expect Iran’s security forces to exercise maximum restraint in handling the protests and for protesters to demonstrate peacefully. Any violence is unacceptable,” Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a statement.

“The rights to freedom of expression and assembly must be guaranteed.”

Read more: Iran protests leave ‘over 100 dead,’ Amnesty says

Germany condemned Iran’s security forces for using excessive force during the unrest. A statement from the Foreign Ministry said: “The right to peaceful protest must be respected. The people in Iran must have the opportunity to show their discontent with political and economic developments, and to voice their opinions freely and peacefully. We call on the Iranian security forces to exercise the greatest possible restraint.”

Internet returns after a five-day blackout

Mass protests erupted in Iran last Friday after the government sharply raised the price of petrol, and the unrest quickly spread to cities and towns across the country.

While officials have confirmed five deaths, human rights group Amnesty International said over 100 demonstrators were believed to have been killed, and that the real toll could be as high as 200.

Meanwhile, the internet slowly returned across the country having been shut down for days by the government in an effort to stem the unrest.

Via Twitter, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked Iranians to send the US videos “documenting the regime’s crackdown on protesters.”

Given the lack of internet coverage, it was difficult to obtain reliable information about the extent of the unrest. The blackout, which had reached its fifth day, had prompted Iranians abroad to tweet hashtags like #Internet4Iran and call for an end to the outage.

Protest leaders arrested

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday declared that the unrest had been put down. “The Iranian people have again succeeded in a historic test and shown they will not let enemies benefit from the situation, even though they might have complaints about the country’s management,” state TV quoted Rouhani as saying.

Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday the protests had been a security matter, not a popular movement, and had been dealt with successfully.

The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement, saying the “arrest of the rioters’ leaders has contributed significantly to calming the situation.” Protest leaders were arrested by the Guards’ intelligence arm in the province of Tehran and Alborz as well as in the southern city of Shiraz, according to the statement.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/iran-protests-eu-urges-end-to-violence/a-51

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Thousands of people participate in Third Annual Women’s March in Washington, US, January 19, 2019.. (photo credit: REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS)

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janissary procession through the Brandenburg Gate on Türkischen Tag (Turkish Day), Berlin, photo via Wikimedia Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 993, November 1, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey, which hosts some 3.5 million refugees, is generally considered a transit or bulwark country in the ongoing refugee crisis. What is less known is that Turkey is also generating refugees of its own.

According to data from the Greek Asylum Service, over the past two years, the number of asylum applicants from Turkey has grown from 189 in 2016 to 2,463 in August 2018. This represents an increase of approximately 1,300%. Moreover, according to Eurostat, approximately 25,000 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in European countries between 2016 and 2017.

The most popular destination is Germany because there is already a substantial Turkish minority there. Between 2016 and 2017, more than 14,000 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in Germany alone. Compared to the number of applicants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, these numbers appear unimpressive. However, if we consider the alarming rate at which the number is increasing, and that Turkey is a relatively stable and somewhat democratic country, the refugee flows from the country are a cause for concern. Their causes and potential impact on the EU warrant examination.

Turkish refugee flows were caused, for the most part, by a combination of the abortive coup attempt in 2016 and the ongoing economic crisis. After the failed coup, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan embarked on a “crusade” to weed out all those suspected of being affiliated in any way with exiled religious leader Fethullah Gülen, whom Erdoğan believes was the coup’s mastermind. For the past two years, Erdoğan has persecuted soldiers, academics, teachers, journalists, and other citizens on suspicion that they are part of the Gülen network. Approximately 150,000 civil servants have lost their jobs and the Turkish police have made over 50,000 arrests.

The second major stimulant of Turkish refugee flows is the ongoing economic crisis. The country’s economy is in a shambles. After years of growth, low-interest rates, and massive, government-backed construction projects, the economy is now in freefall, and the consequences for Turkey’s stability are not yet known.

Since the beginning of 2018, the Turkish lira has lost 42% of its value against the dollar. Inflation rose from 7.2% in January 2015 to 15.9% in July 2018.Ankara also has a high level of debt due for repayment. According to the estimates of the Fitch credit rating agency for 2018, Turkey’s total financing needs will be almost $230 billion.

Despite the bleak economic situation, Erdoğan appears reluctant to implement tighter monetary and fiscal policies out of fear that he will lose the support of his political base. Instead, he has adopted inflammatory, conspiratorial rhetoric against the global financial markets, which he accuses of “waging a secret war against Turkey.” The country’s precarious economic situation is exacerbated by its strained relationship with the US.

These factors have provoked fears among the Turkish population of persecution, unemployment, and restrictions on travel due to the revocation of passports. In response to these fears, some Turkish citizens are attempting to migrate to the EU. The most common route is to cross the Greek border via the Evros River and then, with the help of smugglers, continue on to Europe.

According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, in 2016, the number of Turkish citizens who were granted protection status was 900. In 2017, that figure reached 5,555. This represents an increase of over 300%. These data represent the share of first-instance positive asylum decisions relative to all decisions made in each country. Positive decisions include refugee protection, subsidiary protection, and humanitarian protection. In 2017, the average rate of recognition of asylum applications from Turkish citizens in Europe was 36.0%. This means that in one out three cases, Turkish asylum seekers were granted refugee status.

(Of course, recognition rates vary significantly among European countries. Norway holds the highest rate of recognition with 89.7%. By contrast, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria have yet to reach a positive decision. Greece has a rate of recognition of 54.5%.)

This substantial increase is striking for two reasons. First, it reflects the speed at which the total number of asylum applications from Turkish citizens has risen. Second, it shows that European asylum services recognize that Turkish citizens are being persecuted.

The first major complication when dealing with Turkish refugees stems from the fact that the EU signed an agreement with Ankara in an effort to curb the flows of Syrian refugees. Under the agreement, all Syrians who reached the Greek islands after March 20, 2016, would be returned to Turkey. For each refugee returned to Turkey, one refugee from Greece would be accepted into the EU. Hence, under the agreement, Turkey is considered a “safe third country” that can accept incoming refugee flows.

But this no longer makes sense. European countries now grant refugee protection status to Turkish citizens, meaning they acknowledge that they are suffering persecution in their home country. How, then, can the EU continue to justify the characterization of Turkey as a “safe third country?”

The issue of Turkish refugee flows could be the final nail in the coffin of the agreement, which has been extensively criticized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as by non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. The criticisms revolve around the fact that Turkey cannot be considered safe as it denies refugee status to non-Europeans and is unable to provide effective protection under international law. While some analysts view the agreement as “too big to fail,” it is uncertain whether Turkish refugee flows will allow the agreement to be maintained as is. Even if the EU chooses to uphold it, it cannot deny that Turkey is itself now a generator of refugees.

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Nikolaos Lampas is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Piraeus, Greece. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Peloponnisos, Greece.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/turkey-refugee-crisis/

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